Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom

The intended empowering words of ‘you can be/have/do/experience anything’ are ruining my life.

Instead of liberation, I feel flighty with self-inflicted pressure of making every damn second count to the fullest - like the self-help movement tells us to, right? I find myself stuck in these energy-sucking thought loops, beating like a drum beat between my temples. Finding myself analysing each moment instead of being in it, because I'm attempting to make it more whole than it already is. I'm encouraged by the online content I feast on to squeeze all the juice out of life, but being on a mission for perfectionism means that it is my psyche that is blitzing in Life's blender.

Stepping in to our true nature of Godhood is too much for the smallness in me to fathom; my inner child too fragile, hurt and sensitive to bear the weight of such a role. I have my moments of unbound ecstasy where I play the puppeteer to my reality, shifting the characters and scenes in my story with ease, inspired by golden gushes of clarity. However, I'm finding it trickier to access this kind of elation.

I witness myself backing in to the shame corner when it comes to taking responsibility for my current existence, running the other way, distracted by flickers of fantasy - realising that those temporary fixes of abandoning my power has lead me deep in to the rabbit hole, with nothing else to do but face the black walls that box me in.

I’ve always said that predictability is like a cage, yet expanse infinity is just as suffocating.

Freedom is overwhelming.

Yet isn’t it exactly what us seekers are hunting for?

As a collective, the seeker is a relentless explorer of the soul. We value freedom and dread stability, incessantly looking for the unknowable. We yearn for rich experiences, wander with confidence, chase awe. We are the emotional adventurers, the change makers and creative geniuses - but while our faces are turned toward the wild foreign sun, our shadow is never too far behind. We find it easy to travel, but struggle to stop and ground. We love getting lost in the world, but not in ourselves, which is easy to do in our deep thinking minds. 'Freedom' is a trickster that keeps our dreams alive, promising arrival to the present if we devote ourselves to this false god by constantly escaping our current experience.

We seem to forget that we are already free.

The 'free' seem to know themselves, their boundaries, their values and philosophies, but if you sink your teeth deeper in to the spirits of the wild ones you'll find not one of us knows what the fuck we're doing next - half-heartedly carrying the burden of self-responsibility while we join hands and dance with Life, participating in an unseeable relationship with Her. We have big dreams, of course - but rarely the discipline to take action. Because as long we don't choose a particular 'thing' to dedicate our energy towards - everything else is still possible. And for the space cadets on a relentless pursuit of freedom - we ain't ready to settle down. We prefer romanticism over productivity, wondering over facts, we decorate our existences with unknowables - it's no surprise that myself and my free-spirited friends battle with the anxiety of 'what's next?'. We build stunning and vivid castles in the sky without laying the foundation beneath, and when the Universe changes the directions of the winds, we feel that we have nothing to fall back on to.

Unknown feels expanse to us. Vulnerable, heart open wide, fully engaged with life - but also a terrifying, heart-pounding kind of uncertainty that leaves us floating out of our bodies to find refuge. Often, I am left in a dizzy spell when I am rejecting responsibility of plan-making and action-taking, finding it easier to curl in to a ball and let the hours pass - temporarily 'checking out' while I allow the Universe to sort her shit out and plead 'look after me!'. This is not what oneness or trust looks like - this is disconnect and blaming. If you resonate, I urge you to soften. Carve out time to mindfully look through the identity you have created for yourself and if these qualities were created from fear or from love. Look at what Free-Spirited, Wanderer and Seeker mean for you.

Deep down within there are gems awaiting your dig, for us to patiently sift through all the learned fears we tuck under our 'spiritual' excuses for why we are running away from real life.